Kioshi

Why the hell did I click on that link? I read the entire thing and I had to resist clicking on the links in the article. Damn Dechs for posting a website full of useless information that's more interesting than things I actually have to study and remember for work and ya know, the rest in real life (which are far from fun to read so I don't memorize them as easily as this kind of stuff).

Energy is the worst by far. I like Psi a lot, good secondary effects, good aoe on corrs, you already have -def (rad blast's effect) from traps, and you don't need much -def. Also I never liked Rad's damage but ymmv, haven't tried it too much, unlike DP that I found subpar on two blasters until I make a DP/Dark and was satisfied.

From others, Fire is fire so it's always great. Beam is good mostly because you can leverage disintegration since you don't have to redraw after setting up, just jump back to range and blast. But that's more saying 'Traps benefits Beam' than 'Beam benefits Traps'.

One thing I love about Fire and Ice is the caltrops+Rain combo, on my fire/traps I have bound ctlr+click for caltrops and shift+click for rain. Ice has extra slows too, to keep mobs closer together, besides a very good hold.

I can see it being good for a fire or ice controller, my fire/kin troller and ice/psi dom live in melee, but that's because of hot feet and arctic air, so still, too few powersets. Elec control might be good with Venomous Gas too, mine's still a lowbie so I haven't played it very much but many people like elec doms with melee secondaries like stone (mine is thorns) due to conductive aura so an elec troller would get good mileage of it too I guess. Even a rad blast corr or fender doesn't spend so much time in melee imo to justify Venomous gas, I see them using irradiate and jumping away. My DP/Dark corr is often in melee, might be a good pick, except that the redraw poison forces you bothers me too much, the /dark one doesn't have to debuff every target every few seconds so I don't have a problem with redrawing once in a while.

I don't see many people saying Poison is 'great' as it is. I find it lacking and as posted, the tier 9 is bad for most blast sets, everyone know Poison Trap didn't get changed enough by now, the saving grace of the set is the -special in Weaken. I like the set but most other powers have better equivalents on other sets (Sleet is better than Envenom, the heal is meh, the rez is good but it's just like rad's, so nothing new, Neurotoxic Breath is WAY worse than Shiver, especially the Blaster version, and /Time has better slow powers too, Antidote is also meh, and Paralytic Poison is just your run of the mill hold which time has a better one since if you stack it with the tier 1 power it becomes a mag 4 hold). And if I got my BM/Poison to 38 I'd have to completely change his playstyle to make good use of Venomous Gas.

Also, traps is basically 'complete' by level 28 on corrs after seekers. On any decent team you won't spend time toebombing. Don't compare it with devices, which most consider a gimped set. People who defend devices talk about toebombing, how Time Bomb can be useful sometimes (What were you saying about Traps' final powers? They are the same as lolDevices) because Devices offers little these days compared to other Blaster secondaries. I'm no min maxer, I love my human PB, I find poison decentish on a non-redraw set (although better on a controller mainly for the tier 9), but I don't touch Devices with a 10-foot pole (I tried it to 32 long ago actually, on a Fire Blaster, all the time I couldn't stop thinking I didn't need the stealth and targeting drone because I started playing in i9 when we had IOs, the only thing I liked was Caltrops+Rain of Fire combo which I can do on my 50 fire/traps for more damage since it scourges and RoF has blaster modifier).

1) Traps was broken. Sure it was hilariously fun to nuke a mob every 30 seconds on an ITF with a PGT full of procs, but it was OP'ed - in normal farming the old days, a friends' fire/traps blew every fire/psy doms' times by far because of the nuke PGT. Now tell me that P. Trap is a bad power when a level 20 corr allowed an entire team to use wakies and recover just using that power along ffg because mobs were choking. Remember it does all of these effects on a TWENTY FIVE feet radius:

- Regeneration -10 for 10s PvE only [Ignores Enhancements & Buffs] Effect does not stack from same caster

- RechargeTime -30% for 10s [Ignores Enhancements & Buffs]
Effect does not stack from same caster

- +5.96s Held (mag 3) (after 0.25 second delay)

2) Traps starts being effective on SOs, it's kinda lackluster before because the powers take too long to recharge, after that it only grows stronger. Especially after level 30ish when teams (and you) usually pick higher difficulties with pink mobs and whatnot so battles last enough to have your toys ready every mob.

3) Toebombing works a bit well playing aggressively but not for long - you get trip mine at 35, when you can use one or two mines if you get ahead of everyone (as you should as a trapper) but it's not long before the teams are steamrolling and you don't get much use from it.

4) You don't really need Hover if you're playing aggresively because it doesn't take that long to set up your debuffs and they don't interrupt like Trip Mine, summon seekers on top of spawn, lay down pgt and acid when they're tohit and dmg debuffed, there you go, my /dark and /rad don't need to go to melee to do that but they take about the same time to setup say, tar patch, darkest night, fearsome stare for the team. One thing that worked very well for me was SS+Stealth IO + grant invis for the FFG (I was gonna pick some LOTG mule anyway, was surprised how effective it was for laying your traps in the late game when , you're right, some mobs can destroy the FFG quickly - although I'm leveling a new trapper and in the 20s I don't have grant invis or SS yet and have no problem laying debuffs, maybe it's a late game problem as the enemies get harder, I took my fire/traps to 50 long ago)

5) Most corrs that take Mace Mastery do it because of Scorpion Shield and maybe Foc Accuracy (good set mule too), those don't cause redraw (how often do you see them taking web cocoon? And even if they take the crappy pet it takes forever to recharge even in a top build, even web coccon has a hideously long recharge - 32s - for a simple hold so you'd need an IO build to use it every 8 secs, Envenom and Weaken recharge in 12 and 16s unslotted, with SOs you can get those to about 6 and 8s). And even if you pick the mass immob which can be a nice power, you won't use it every 5 seconds like the Poison debuffs. The problem with Poison you don't seem to grasp is NOT the redraw, but the FREQUENCY you do it. Unlike Traps, Dark, Rad, Cold, the 'debuff phase' of Poison is almost never over, if there are 3 tough pink bosses you will want to use your debuffs on each of them, which is already more often than if your rad anchor dies, because if you play smart and choose a decent target, by the time your anchor dies you will likely not need to use the debuff again since your team will already have killed half of them. Even if you do need, it's still way less often than poison. For the record I wouldn't play Empathy with Beam Rifle either, seeing as how my first and most IO'ed hero, a Mind/Emp troller, alternates between her primary and secondary so much, even though I don't need to heal all the time like when I was noobish and/or in the lower levels, it almost feels like her primary and secondary are from the same powerset since I don't think which is which and use both a lot - meaning, on a weapon toon, it would also be redraw hell, and I think /kin would bother me a bit as well even with the AoE Speed Boost since my fire/kin is quite the switcher too. (I'm not criticizing you for not understanding why people complain about redraw specifically for poison, after all I could have the same doubt if I didn't play one to 28 and got sick of seeing redraw because I had to use some debuff for the 5th time on the same battle unlike my dp/dark, the only other toon I have that has significant redraw since others are melee and I think the only one who has a power that's up often is my db/elec scrapper - power sink - and it's not 5 seconds often and 'must use almost every time it's up' like weaken/envenom/maybe neurotoxic depending on team/difficulty).

That could be a nice combo. It'd be REAL nice if the -end component from Poison's Poison Trap was stronger, its chance now is too low. I find elec blast kinda low on damage but it's a good idea, has a hold to stack with the poison one, no annoying redraw and the pet.

Anyway, if I had to 'guess', I think that since MMs have been praising Poison for AV killing for ages (and it's undoubtedly a great set for really hard single targets) the devs didn't want to change much for fear of making it OP - the problem for me is that for big mobs it's just too much work to debuff everyone and the AoE powers like Neurotoxic Breath are subpar, as is the tier 9 that despite having good numbers, at least in my case it would only mesh well with a controller that has some aura, which aren't all - for example, Mind/Fire and Earth/Fire doms are very popular, and most of them skip Incinerate (a great attack) because you can have a ranged attack chain with /fiery assault and Mind and Earth have little reason to go melee, I myself respecced out of it on my Earth/Fire. Now if she was Ice/, Fire/ or Elec/ I'd never skip it. But the problem with Venomous Gas is that unlike Doms and some trollers, most Defs and Corr blast sets have little reason to stay in melee, even those with PbAoE attacks usually jump in, use them and jump out. My Ice/Time corr spends significant time in melee but time has good self protection tools (the aura you get early, heal) and buffs that you have to approach the melee dudes to use well (Farsight, Chrono Shift), unlike Poison where most debuffs (and all buffs except the rez) you can do from afar.

Being a fan of both armors, I agree. That's why I want CoF to be more useful, being it reducing end costs or having normal base accuracy. OG is great on my dm/da scrapper since she can focus on the hard targets and ignore minions, might be good also for a Tanker (they'll wander but come back to you eventually), but I wouldn't make a WM/ or Stone Melee/Dark Brute, so much mitigation it would hinder Fury - I took CoF for my Claws/Dark Broot but Claws has lighter end use than Stone/Mace and CoF doesn't get in the way of Fury too much since you'll always take some hits or attack attempts from mobs because you're constantly damaging them with Death Shroud, plus they won't wander. And my Stone/Elec Brute was an end nightmare before Power Sink (ELA didn't have energize back when I leveled her), she could tank on SOs at 22 because of Fault, the mallets' KDs and the mag4 hold on S. Smash but she was also my only toon (slotted with only acc and endred on attacks, relying on Fury for damage) that ever ran out of end with speed boost , it would be even worse for a /DA.

That's nice to know, although unless you (or your team) is a disaster you won't be making much difference giving them a lil extra hp/end or rocking the aura often by the time you usually slot the proc, unless you buy it and mail to a lowbie you just created.

I dislike claws on Stalkers because the reasons I like them so much on Brutes and Scrappers are exactly the same things Stalkers lack - Spin is awesome and despite doing lethal damage, claws is competent even in s/l resistant mobs on the other ATs because of double stacked FU (and Fury on Broots). The faster BU and higher damaging Eviscerate were nice touches although they turned Evisc into a ST attack, just isn't enough for me to play the set on Stalker.

That's understandable. The reason I could use Soul Drain so well (haven't played her in a long time) before IOing her was OG - it let me ignore minions so I could focus on the bosses and some pesky lt since she never had much AoE (DM after all).

On WSs the best slotting for Eclipse is one you can max rech and res. With 2 nucs you'll cap res because of the HO exploit, on mine I have 4 cheapish rech/res IOs (like Aegis, Impervium, etc) which achieve the same effect as 2 HOs+3 rech plus an acc, so 5 slots anyway, the 2 HOs would give you better acc but I dont find it necessaty in my case.

Anyway Eclipse doesn't turn you into a tanker, even if it did, my SS/Fire Brute can die in an ambush fire farm (and of course he has 90% fire res, plus even 30% fire def so I can po a purple and not worry about dying) if he stands still - killing mobs fast is a way to get attacked less, farm or not. In the case of the WS, I play like an energizer bunny, eclipsing, miring and then changing forms, going ranged and melee, stunning with the cone stun, holding with GWell, in fact he has so many binds (eclipse, mires, stygian, form shift) that every time I log him I get owned a few times before I get a grip on him again, it's worse if I stand more than a month without playing him (like now) and have to remember what each bind does again - unlike my ss brute or my dm scrapper who have binds for Rage and Soul Drain, the WS ones I die in seconds if I misclick one. It's the tootn that requires me most reflexes to play decently, the only one I have that busier is my mind/emp troller (she has more binds too ) but in her case the busy part is to be efficient with buffs and control, it's not like the WS where she'll die if I don't use all my resources all the time, she just won't buff the team as efficiently, trollers are safe anyway, I always found them a bit OP especially after having epics, I've been sticking with corrs nowadays because trollers are too busy sometimes.

My dom has no defenses but I started doing crazy stuff with her after permadom and in the good old days of spamming PSW (which had great damage under dom, lower rech, lower radius), so she was always at the regen and recovery cap in the middle of big mobs (slotted DP wth 1 acc+5 doctored wounds), ice/psi doesn't have the hard control other primaries have but since she was always under domination it wasn't hard to hold say, 2 bosses who hit hard and kill the rest fast even having only Arctic Air to give me some protection (which was not much).

BTW elec brutes can cap energy res (90%) at SO level, as long as you have grounded. IIRC scrappers can cap at DO level (75%) after Grounded, I remember being quite shocked when I saw the resists on my db/elec at level 20 because of the blue number on the stats, they were are 75% already, it's been a long time but I'm almost sure of that, you don't see blue numbers very often.

On a Brute you don't even need capped anything to farm, check out the CEBR thread in the Broot forums. I took a claws/fire to 33 in 4 hours using a farm that caps you at 3 (meaning, I had like 25% res to s/l/f) and a claws elec to 30 the same way. Tried with my db/elec scrapper and it was very tough, she's 40 but with her powers up to level 8 and in this level 3 farm slotting makes no difference, so without fury she didn't kill fast enough and died before getting insps, while the claws brutes powered by fury and no slotting refilled the entire tray after each Spin and always got one or another after each tick from the dmg aura (which is also powered by fury). It's actually more relaxing to farm with the claws catgirls (yeah I made two catgirls lol) than with my 50+3 ss/fire broot. With the claws ones, I just have to use 4 purples+4 oranges and click before entering, maybe eat a lot of reds if I'm not lazy and reserve 4 purples for when the first 4 I used before entering expire - although insps drop so fast that I survived most times I forgot to pick more purples because if I just mashed f1=f5 after each spin I was somehow always with good def and resists. My SS/Fire is 50+3 and has a 1-billion secondary build for farming (although he could do it with SOs especially after the alpha slot when I bumped to +4/x8) but I have to remember clicking Rage, FE, FStomp, Ball Lightning, E. Fences. On the claws ones (one is locked at 33, the other I don't remember) I just leave Spin on auto and only use follow up. If I remembered to click hasten before entering (since I won't have it inside the mission, picked after level 8), I cap tickets before the second row of lucks expire, if I didn't click Hasten that's ok too because lucks drop anyway and get defense capped most of the time.

Curiously my WS was the toon I had the easiest time after the brute in those lowbie farms (after the brutes). Got to level 6, picked nova, and went to a level 1 ambush farm. Since at this level Nova is more powerful than any blaster (two aoes, two good sts at lvl 6) and the mobs' ranged attacks were weaker than the melee ones, I was able to cruise to 22 (level I wanted since I had deleted my previous WS at 30 so I wanted to get the new one to SOs at least) in less than an hour. I tried a fire/fire tanker which has great aoe damage for a Tank at this level (blazing aura, combustion) and god he was so slow to kill stuff because of no fury and low damage mod, it seemed to take forever to get to 22. But I guess a fire/fire of ss/fire tanker can farm SLOWLY with a 50 build on SOs, the IO'ed out ones I saw doing that were way slower than my SS/Fire Brute when he was SOed. And I'm not even of of those who eats tons f reds to stay damage capped on my Brute or time my farming time, I actually like doing it more with the claws girls because of fewer presses, even if it takes a bit longer to cap tickets and it's way less infl/min since I'm not farming at +4/x8 like the broot. I only do it when I'm really bored anyway so I want to have the most relaxing experience possible when farming (and worrying only about insps and pressing 1 for follow up with spin on auto lets me spam the channels with chatter ).

Incinerate is Fiery Melee's best ST attack, with a low end cost and great damage, when fm/sd scrappers were all the rage some math gurus skipped GFS in favor of Incinerate, the ones who took it said they took GFS for wanting to have a 'bursty damage' attack. Of course those were highly IO'ed builds capable of chaining Fire Sword-Cremate-Incinerate.

Breath is bad, only 30 degree arc cone compared to Frost's 90 so you won't be hitting as many enemies. Plus with Burn, FSC, Fireball and Blazing aura you won't miss he AoE.

Also, Melt Armor sucks, it does too little for too much end (people usually describe it as a 'cool emote that costs lots of endurance' since it has little practical effect compared with the /thermal version) - you could get fire blast instead and have another solid st attack, on my fm/sd scrap (which is not IOed, lost interest on her) I used it a lot, I never took Scorch too (she always had an attack ready even on SOs and before epics, she has FS, Cremate, Incinerate and GFS and later Fire Blast). I like Fire Blast a lot even on my SS/Fire/Fire (who is IOed and incarnated) primary build - he has a farming secondary build which is /Mu and is mostly AoE focused but I make good use of Fire Blast even on iTrials since it's a good damaging, fast recharging and ranged attack.

This. I love my ice/time corr and how busy she is, but the beamer/poison drove me crazy with taking my weapon in and out ALL THE FREAKING TIME.

Plus except for Frost Breath which I don't know if I'll keep, Ice Blast works pretty well in melee range (/time has a debuff aura too, and the heal and buffs so you want to get close to the melee mans sometimes).

That said I'm thinking about which primary could go well with poison... Ice certainly could but I have my ice/time whose theme is to be the ultimate slow corr, and she does well at that. Fire, meh, done too many times. Rad may be a good choice but the damage seems lackluster from what I've talked to other people, I never played rad blast tho. Dark relies on cones and sonic too.

Errr thanks for mentioning me but... That's a terrible build ntm it costs 10 billion, you can have a better one with 500 mil for all IOs + 5 lotgs using merits or whatever.

No other answer really, there's hard evidence:

Not really true for traps, since setup time is minimal and your debuffs won't expire in a single mob like /rad (or poinson where you have to apply your best powers multiple times) unless your acid mortar is killed and that's not common.

My fire/traps and beam/traps are the same for 'setup period' - summon seekers, charge into melee before anyone else, lay down mortar and PGT, start blasting and forget about traps until next mob. With traps you have to play aggressive at least as a corr if you wanna keep up with the team.

So I disagree, Traps isn't more 'laborious' on Beam Rifle than Fire Blast or whatever, unlike Poison or Time that force too much redraw and are very annoying for me on a Beamer (deleted a Beam/Poison at 28 - besides the damn redraw hell, the other reason was that my BM/Poison was never in need to be in melee and the tier 9 power is an aura and changing my playstyle because of that would suck, algo getting in the way of Beam's great and fast recharging cone).

Well except that Soul Calibur is almost like a JRPG fighting game aesthetically, AND it's a Japanese game too! RPG or not, the Japanese games started the huge weapon craze (not saying they created it, they just made them famous). And of course Soul Calibur took inspiration from all the 1000 huge weapon wielding JRPG (or other kind of japanese games) to create Nightmare and whatshisname (the good version of him in Soul Blade). Final Fantasy IV (II in the US) already had giant weapons in 1991.

Ah didn't see you were talking about that proc. I didn't know it either but doesn't surprise me, it must be coded like a damage proc or the purple confuse proc - slotted in arctic air it will confuse your enemies. Although the Force Feedback chance for +rech is fantastic in Footstomp or other KB powers because despite being a power that targets enemies, the recharge goes to you when it fires, the Panacea one should theoretically work like that too, maybe they're coded differently and they made Panacea work like a regular chance to damage/confuse/immob proc.

So the better place to slot it is in a power that targets you and is on all the time like FH or Health since there's no self healing power in any set that you'll use more than once every 10 seconds in practice (maybe an emp who rocks the aura lol).

Btw the Performance Shifter is 20%, not 10%:

'This enhancement adds a 20% chance to restore 10 endurance. (This IO will grant endurance to enemy targets if slotted in an enemy-targeted power, such as Dark Consumption.)'

There is.. once in activation, and once every 10 seconds after. Except for say, ice controllers with basically no secondary damage source, i don't like slotting procs on auras, the chance is too low (I wouldn't even slot in the troller but many people do).

For example you can use most AoE attacks (like footstomp) every 5 secs or so on a high end build and hit more than a damage aura each time. Or in the case of a controller, the AoE immob you can use every 2 secs with a lil recharge and easily hit the target cap.

Yeah that's the general consensus among the number crunchers, scrappers outdamage brutes... WHEN YOU'RE SOLOING A PYLON WITH YOUR TOP ATTACK CHAIN AND POOSTING YOUR BEST TIME AND DPS UGUUU'~~~~

Ok besides that I don't think you'll feel a lot of difference when soloing or teaming in normal content, they say that only shields make a very noticeable difference in general because of both your damage bonus aura (damage bonuses favours the AT with higher base dmg) and the pet damage cap which is like 400% or 500%, anyway way lower than Broots' 775% and with lower base damage Shield Charge won't do you as much as scrapper's. According to Bill Z Bubba's calcs, SS would be way better on scrappers (about 14% not counting Gloom which is like, one of the best attacks for a SS - and lots of other Brute sets' ST chain) because of the damage enhancing from Rage but scrappers don't have that, and SS is awesomesauce for Brutes anyway.

Since I prefer Brutes (I just feel more powerful with them and I like to help my fellow squishies in the rare occasions I play melee so I take Taunt and love damage auras, brutes are the only ones who get dmg auras with taunt besides loltankers, you can see in the boards how much the spines/fire scraps hate the mob scatter and Burn isn't as effective because of that), I'd only make a scrapper now for shields (maybe regen, a set I only played on Stalkers and maybe I won't want a taunt aura for a regen), although I enjoy my DB/Elec Scrapper when I don't want to care about anyone else on the team (btw someone also said that on a TOP IO build specced for the TOP attack chain DB outperforms Brutes quite a bit because of Blinding Feint for ST DPS on Avs and Pylons UGUUU~~~ - Claws is not behind the way DB according to them is because Claws has been adjusted with different rech/end/dmg values for Broots).

There's also some discussion on Fire Melee - it was vastly superior on Brutes before the Fury changes because the DoTs scale with Fury, and do nothing for scrappers besides normal damage, but now with the Fury change Bill told me Fire would still be better on Brutes but not by much. So on usual play situations most combos should feel about the same and more depending on player taste.

This happens on Freedom and Virtue but 95% (maybe 100%, not sure) of the times I saw people requiring 50s were for Mo attempts. I think I saw one or two occasions that were speed runs.

AVs, Lord Recluse's Pylons on the STF (not sure if you really need HOs to cage the pylons, but I'm sure you need them for AVs, have seen the R.Offenders do that sometimes).

Slash is a ST attack, that's why he mentioned using it as a Kinetic Combat Mule. You probably mistook it for Slice.

Thanks! Emberly's posts usually make me laugh but this quote I found sig-worthy

The Brute I self-pl'ed in AE to 33 in 4 hours didn't get caught by MERTy. Not that self-pling is a good strategy for a Stalker and for a new player.

But well now:

1) Can't see if you have combat jumping - it adds more defense, as much as Hide suppressed iirc (om mac os x now, too lazy to open the game to check).

2) 5 or 6-slot your attacks - 1 acc, 3 dmg, 1 rech or endredux - both if you 6-slot them. You can get away with 1 acc with focused acc or even with a kismet IO which isn't expensive these days in Hide or C.Jumping. You'll also want a karma -kb IO in one of these - ask your 50 friends, they can afford it, they're dirt cheap nowadays. The Steadfast +3 def Unique is cheapish too.

3) You can skip Sting of the wasp, it's not really good. Also, since you won't use Assassin Strike every time it's up like other attacks, 1 acc+3 damage is okay (it's up fairly often already, and you'll use it less at later levels).

4) Kuji In Sha - 3 rech, 3 heal

5) Kuji In Rin - 2-3 recharges, 2 is enough with hasten ime even with SOs.

6) Kuji In Retsu - 1-3 recharges is enough depending on how often you plan to use it, no defense needed, you'll be way over the defense softcap.

7) Your defense toggles - 3 defs, 1 endred - your attacks cost will cost more endurance than your toggles.

8) Smoke Flash is meh, get Blinding powder, slot for acc, confuse and if you have room, recharge.

9) Placate is fine with two recharge IOs, get lvl 45-50 ones when you're higher level.

10) If you really want Recall Friend, just 1 range IO in the base slot is enough.

11) Didn't see of you slotted Health - put a heal IO for now until you learn the invention system for a unique (Miracle, Numina, your friends probably know about those).

12) 3 endmods in Stamina - you can get away with 2 since /Nin is not end heavy neither is ninja blade, but ymmv.

13) Divine Avalanche - 1 acc, 2 dmg, 2 defense - it recharges fast enough.

If I forgot something, other people can correct/add.

Lulz Stj is gimp u shud do liek me my ss fire broot pharms phat lootz at +4/x8 AVS ONLY tix cap in 15 secs no insps no IOs